Influence de la pression de l'air sur la vie de l'homme

Abstract

AFTER having practised medicine for six years on the borders of the Gulf of Mexico, and rendered himself familiar with the diseases and conditions of life of the inhabitants of low levels, M. Jourdanet removed to the elevated plateau of Anahuac—more than 2,000 metres above the sea level. Here, as might have been anticipated, he found the pathological conditions different, but to his surprise he discovered that the differences were not simply such as result from temperature, or are paralleled in places of lower level and higher latitude, but presented peculiarities which he conceived to be dependent on the elevation of the situation alone. A residence of twenty years in the locality enabled him to confirm this idea and to prove that, while the blood of the inhabitants presented no poverty of corpuscles, the corpuscles themselves were deficient in oxygen, on account, as he believed, of the too feeble pressure of the atmosphere in these high regions. This led him to undertake the study of the whole question of the influence of the atmospheric pressure on health, and to call to his aid M. Paul Bert, Professor of Physiology at the Sorbonne, by means of whose experiments he believes himself to have arrived at some definite results. These, with every other possible point of interest connected with the subject, he now presents us with, in two large and beautifully illustrated volumes; leaving, however, the details of the physiological experiments to be published in a forthcoming work by M. Bert himself.

Influence de la pression de l'air sur la vie de l'homme.

Par D. Jourdanet. 2 vols. (Paris: Masson, 1874.)